Goodies Announcement

The new Beyond HTML Goodies book
is now available!

Go beyond the basics
and learn how the pros add and use dynamic HTML features and advanced
JavaScript techniques. Beyond HTML Goodies demonstrates dozens of new and
different features readers can add to their existing Web pages using HTML and
JavaScript. The book starts with simple text and image tips, such as adding a
clock to a Web page or causing text to appear when the mouse moves over an
image. It gradually builds to more complex tricks, including manipulating forms
or working with cookies behind the scenes. Throughout the book, readers enjoy
Joe's snappy style and "to the point" discussion of each "goody" in the book.

It's most unlikely that anybody using a computer these days
isn't aware of the release of Microsoft's Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2). It's
been all over the news, the portal sites; it may even have already been
downloaded to your computer if you have Windows Update configured for automatic
downloads. So the question is, should you install it?

There's been a lot of talk about compatibility issues with SP2, and plenty of
people I know have decided to hold off installing it for now, to "let them shake
the bugs out." Thinking that you might like to know a little more about it
before you make up your mind, I decided to experiment with it and share my
results with you.

Firstly, let's consider what's in it, and why we might want it. SP2 is mainly
about security. There are the usual bug fixes, etc. in there, of course, as
would be expected of a service pack, but the big deal in the improvement to
Windows itself, Internet Explorer and Outlook Express. There is also the new
Windows Media Player 10, a spiffed up new version which is pretty cool, and if
you're into music and video on the PC, has some very nice features for you!
(I'll no go into that right now though, I think of it more as a plaything than a
work thing or tool, and besides, you can get it with or without SP2, so you can
try it out for yourself!)

In Windows itself, the most significant change is to the firewall. The firewall
now comes up earlier in the boot cycle and closes later so that it offers
wall-to-wall protection against intruders and intruder-ware. It also comes with
improved configurability and is turned on by default - a very good idea.

There's the new Security Center, which gives you a bird's-eye view of the status
of security settings in your computer, and provides links to the Firewall,
Internet Options and Automatic Updates control dialogs.

Automatic Updates, which are a very good idea, are also more intuitive to
configure, and will default to automatically downloading and installing updates
in the wee hours of the morning - also a great idea, if you have a broadband
link to the net.

Improvements to the Internet Explorer include a pop-up blocker (hoorah!) and
active-x control blocker (that's how a lot of spyware comes in) that display a
new Information Bar when something is blocked, and allows you to decide what you
want to do. There's also a new Add-on Manager to help you easily see which
add-ons you have and eliminate any potentially troublesome ones.

Outlook Express has some features to help you out also. It now blocks pictures
and external content from being displayed in a message until you expressly
permit them. This helps not only in preventing nasty stuff from showing up on
your screen when your sitting in a coffee shop or when the local Ladies' Club is
meeting in your living room, but also prevents your email address from being
automatically validated as the external content is accessed (that's one way your
address gets to be so famous!) It also intercepts potentially harmful
attachments, warning you about them and asking you how you want to proceed with
them.

Ok -- so that's a summary of the improvement highlights; what about the
downside?

Apart from games, most of the compatibility issues reported have been very minor
-- not the sort of thing that prevents a program form running. For example,
Symantec incorporates an "anti-meddling" technology in the anti-virus products
that prevents external software from messing with it. It also prevents the
Windows Security Center from seeing whether or not your anti-virus is up to
date. Consequently, the correct status doesn't show up. No biggy! Most
applications (including Symantec's) have updates available if you want them.

Games, however, are where most of the complaints originate. This is particularly
true of multi-player games that are messed about by the default settings of the
Windows Firewall. For these, you would need to go to the manufacturer's site and
get their recommendations. Note that this would also hold true for any firewall
-- and you do want to have a firewall in place! Similar problems have been
reported by users of some VPN clients, which some of you probably use to connect
to the office systems. If any of this type of software is important to you, I
suggest you check out the manufacturer's site before you install, and decide for
yourself based on what you find.

As to bugs -- all I can say is to repeat my friend's favorite "Bug quote":
"There's no such thing as a significant piece of software that doesn't have some
bugs in it." How true! Even as software matures, there comes a time when the fix
for this bug creates a conflict with the fix for that bug and a new bug is born!

I've been using SP2 now on three of my machines for several days and I've
experienced no problems at all. The reality of the Internet world these days is
that it is a hostile place, but just like a well built house helps protect you
from the ravages of bad weather, well built software helps protect you from the
net's nastinesses.

Q. I have recently made an e-mail form with the help of the tutorial on
the site, and my form is made up entirely of text boxes. However, I find that
the
text boxes are ugly.. I would like the borders of them to be a different colour,
so they do not have that "greay shadow" look. I know it is possible to change
the colour of them, as I have seen it done on another website, but how can I do
it on mine?

A. The easiest way to do it is to set up a style for the "input" in you
style sheet, since you are only using text boxes. The following will also apply
to any radio buttons or checkboxes that may be in the form. If you add them
later, you may want to set up a class. But for now, add this to your style
sheet:
input { border: 1px solid black; }
You can use change the pixel size, or switch from solid to dashed. For colors,
you can use the text names that are available, or the hexadecimal (#000000).

Q. How do I make a link from a popup window close the popup window and
link back to a page of the main web site?

A. To refer back to the window that opened the popup you would use the
term "opener". I would suggest that you create a function in your popup to load
the page into the main window and then close the popup. The function could look
like this:
function LoadPage(linkid)
{
opener.location.href=linkid
self.close()
}
You can then call this function and pass the page you want to load into the
"opener" window as a value like this:
<.a HREF="#" onClick="LoadPage('mypage.html')">Click Me<./a>
or:
<.a HREF="javascript:LoadPage('mypage.html')">Click Me<./a>
The second example might be better because IE5.0 has a problem when you use the
"#" sign to void the link. You can also reference function in the "opener"
window from the popup by prefacing the function name with the term "opener" like
this:
opener.function_name()
As you can see you can reference just about anything in the main window as long
as you preface it with "opener".

Q. Is there a way to have something other than a button do this job?
<.FORM>
<.INPUT TYPE="button" Value="Change Three Frames at Once"
onClick="parent.frames[1].location='zippy5.html';
parent.frames[2].location='zippy6.html';
parent.frames[3].location='zippy7.html';">
<./FORM>
I would like to have a blue underlined word do the same thing the button does,
to save vertical space in a clickable list arrangement.

A. You can use a text link like so:
<.A HREF="#" onClick="parent.frames[1].location='zippy5.html';
parent.frames[2].location='zippy6.html';
parent.frames[3].location='zippy7.html';">Click Here<./A>

Q. Recently we have discovered that someone has taken pictures from
several of our web sites and is using them on his site to advertise. I know
there
are JAVA scripts to disable right clicks and make this sort of piracy more
difficult with Explorer. Is there ANY way to stop this if the person uses
Netscape?

A. Keep in mind that the images on your site cannot be 100% protected
from people taking them. There is a way around the "no right click" script. But
it might slow them down if they don't want to go through the extra effort. I
have tested this script in Netscape Navigator 4.7 and it works. I think it
should work in most of the browsers but I am not sure as to which ones.
Place the following code between the <.HEAD><./HEAD> tags of your HTML code.
<.script language="JavaScript">
<.!--
/*
No rightclick script v.2.5
(c) 1998 barts1000
barts1000@aol.com
Don't delete this header!
*/
var message="Sorry, that function is disabled.\n
This Page Copyrighted and\n
Images and Text protected!\n
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED";
// Don't edit below!
function click(e) {
if (document.all) {
if (event.button == 2) {
alert(message);
return false;
}
}
if (document.layers) {
if (e.which == 3) {
alert(message);
return false;
}
}
}
if (document.layers) {
document.captureEvents(Event.MOUSEDOWN);
}
document.onmousedown=click;
// -->
<./script>

Q. I am trying to figure out the way to provide the option popup window
that gives the user the option to save or open a file they get off of a website,
whether it be a PDF file or an image.

A. That is not something that the website controls. It is done
automatically by the operating system when the user clicks on the file. If the
user clicks on a link that is a PDF file for instance they may get the pop up
box that asks if they want to save or open the file. If the user has Adobe
Acrobat Reader installed on their computer it may just open it up using the
Acrobat Reader control embedded in IE.

Q. I am new to HTML and I though that I would try a css to make things a
little easier for me. I have been able to get most of it but I can't get
anything to work for the BODY tag. I have tried cutting from the tutorial for
color. And have tried cutting background image from the tutorial and from
someone else's page then change name for my image. I can get font to work but
can't seem to get it to work on the body tag. The image name is right I have cut
it and put onto a page to double check.
Here is the code for my CSS page.
<.STYLE TYPE="text/css"><.!--
BODY {background-image: url(bicyclechain.jpg);}
TH {font-size: 9pt; color: #FFFFFF}
TD {font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 9pt; color: #FFFFFF}
A{text-decoration:none}--><./STYLE>

A. It appears to be the right code, but are your images in the same
folder/directory as the CSS files? I would try two things: first, use lowercase
letters for your HTML code in the HTML file and in the CSS file; second, use the
full URL for the image, like http://www.mysite.com/images/picture.gif. Some
browsers have trouble showing images from different folders, but can show them
if you're using the full path (Netscape Navigator 4 is like this).

Q. I am wondering if there is a way to resize div layers according to
browser size inside of a CSS? My page is set for a 1024x700 but would like it to
resixe according to the viewers browser size. I know about the JavaScript
version but will that work with a position absolute attribute?

A. You could use relative sizes instead of absolute if you want the site
to be flexible against the user's browser size. Relative sizes are usually
defined in percentages and absolute sizes in pixels. Unless you are looking for
a way to resize the user's browser itself? That can't be done with CSS, but you
could use JavaScript or DHTML.

Q. I'm looking for a password entry script that returns an asterisk in a
textarea as a user enters each letter of their password.

A. I have not seen one where you enter a password into a textarea, but
you can use the input type of password for that effect. Like this:
<.input type="password" size="10" name="passw">
Also here is a link to some JavaScript password scripts:
http://www.javascriptkit.com/script/cutindex6.shtml
You should know that JavaScript is not very secure when it comes to password
protecting documents.

Sun Headed For Roots With Wall Street Show
[September 17, 2004] The systems vendor will go back to New York to convince
financial services firms it still has the computing goods to run a tight,
cost-effective ship.

Every week a site is selected for review. Each week,
reviews of the previous week's selected site are chosen for
publication on the HTML Goodies website.

The current week's selected site is published in Goodies To
Go and in the Peer Reviews section of the website.
Current contact email addresses for submitting your site and
for submitting reviews are published in Goodies To Go.

If you would like to have your site reviewed, sign up for
the Goodies To Go newsletter in the Navigation Bar on the
left side of this page.

Did you ever wish your newsletter was an easy two way communications medium?
Ploof! It now is!
If you would like to comment on the newsletter or expand/improve on something
you have seen in here, you can now send your input to:

We already receive a lot of email every day. This address will help us sort out
those relating specifically to this newsletter from all the rest. When you send
email to this address it may wind up being included in this section of the
newsletter, to be shared with your fellow readers.
Please don't send your questions to this address.
They should be sent to our mentors: see
http://www.htmlgoodies.com/mentors/

For those who are missing Peer reviews: we are once again
revising the Peer review program in the hopes of creating a
workable solution. The current plan is to move the new Peer
Review pages into place in the new year. All those who have
been selected for reviews in the past will be featured in
the new pages. The new method will make it much easier for
your peers to provide feedback and much easier for us to
handle the publication side of things. "Watch this space!"
It's coming soon!!

One feature that stands out when comparing different
versions of ADO.NET is transaction processing. Bill Ryan
shows just how easy transaction processing has become with
the TransactionScope object in ADO.NET 2.0.

If you ask me, it's one of the main reasons for visiting the
French Riviera - that, and pretty much everything else about
the Riviera! Delayed by World War II (it was originally to
debut on September 1 1939, but Hitler invaded Poland that
day) the Festival de Cannes began on this day in 1946 as a
promotion to bring tourists back to the South of France and
the Riviera. By the 1950's the Festival International du
Film de Cannes had become the most prestigious film festival
in the world. Attended by more than 30,000 people each year,
it is still regarded as such by most people in the industry.

Today was also the day that in: 1664 Maryland enacted
the first anti-amalgamation law to prevent widespread
intermarriage of English women & black men; 1797 The
US frigate Constitution (Old Ironsides) was launched in
Boston; 1830 first National Black convention met in
Philadelphia; 1881 Chester A. Arthur was sworn in as
President of the US; 1884 the Equal Rights Party
nominated female candidates for President and Vice-President
of the US; 1954 the first computer program written in
FORTRAN was run; 1958 Martin Luther King Jr was
stabbed in the chest by a deranged black woman in New York
City; 1960 the United Nations General Assembly
admitted 13 African nations, along with Cyprus, bringing the
total of member countries to 96; 1962 James Meredith
was prevented from entering Mississippi University as its
first black student; 1972 police found cannabis
growing on Paul and Linda McCartney's farm; 1973
Billy Jean King beat Bobby Riggs in the "Battle of the
Sexes" tennis match; 1975 David Bowie's "Fame" hit #1
(stayed for two weeks); 1977 Voyager 2 was launched,
the mission completed fly-by passes of Jupiter, Saturn,
Uranus and Neptune; 1985 Orlando's Walt Disney World
welcomed its 200 millionth guest; 1990 East and West
Germany ratified their reunification;

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